As is the case when you work with any large body of material, especially in a sandbox of shared creations like the Marvel Universe, there’s a wide range of one-off or little used works that could be a lot of fun to give a new life to. We see that pretty regularly in a lot of books and sometimes it translates to the big screen.
As James Gunn continues work on the second Guardians of the Galaxy script, he’s shared a fun tidbit about an alien race he wanted to get clearance for just for some background aspects of the film since the ability to populate the overall film universe with some of the quirkier creations is appealing to folks like him – and myself.
While writing Guardians scripts I like to use the names of characters from the comics as much as possible – it makes watching the movie more fun for longtime Marvel fans (one of whom is me). Characters like Kraglin, The Broker, Bereet, and Garthan Saal all originally appeared in the comics, albeit sometimes in very different incarnations. Every name I use I have to run through the Marvel legal department. Lately, in the service of building out the Marvel cosmic side of the universe, I’ve been trying to clear names of alien species we see in the background. It’s always a bummer when I can’t use a name, usually because Fox or Sony or Hasbro or whomever owns the rights. But today I received a brand new reason for being advised against calling one of the alien species “Sneepers.”
“Sneeper is a word for clitoris in Icelandic.”
🙁
Alas, poor Sneepers, we hardly knew you.
